Necessity is the mother of innovation

[Extract}
In the world of surfing, printed surfing magazines are still important. They are authoritative, influential and enduring. And they are integral to the sustainability of the surf industry because they are the ultimate purveyors of surf culture. The symbiotic relationship between surfing magazines and the surf industry is as important today as it was twenty years ago. Yet surf mags are still struggling.

This is because most surf mag publishers are still doing the same thing they did twenty years ago, while the media world around them has completely transformed. They still churn out a monthly magazine, covering a broad range of topics under the generalised surfing theme - only now they do it on smaller budgets and less time because there’s a website to maintain and at least two social media channels to feed. The end result is a print product that contains shallow content skimming over the top of a broad swathe of surfing topics.